Saint Claire Avenue is the main thoroughfare in East 90’s Cleveland; a lot of drug dealers post up on Saint Claire. They sell weed on 93rd street and crack further up

Bizzy has no “bucket” (car), so he neets to ride the Regional Transit Authority #10 bus, which runs through 93rd and 105th streets, to St. Claire, where he could score some dope.

Jay is confused from the weed smoke, and doesn’t “need” your input on his consistency. He’s self commenting on how weed disorients your train of thought.

He’s confused whether or not to get out of the game. His mom is scared of him getting killed, and he has already made millions. But the attention from the girls the pecks that come with the drug-dealing life make this a hard decision.

The verse flows in a probing fashion. Jay is painting a picture of an inner struggle to quit the game of drug dealing as well as the burden of knowing his loved ones(mom most pointedly) are worried about how this is going to end for him. His confusion is with all these choices and decisions he has to make and then it gets so bad, he succumbs to smoking weed, something he’s been against just to show the listener how vulnerable he’s feeling by the end of this verse. He’s aware of the contradiction and he doesn’t need you to add any further chastising to his already tormented/confused state of mind.. Just let him be…

A play on the title of the T.V. show Hill Street Blues, Jay-Z’s streets are “ill” (sick); the denizens are hungry for sustenance

Also a reference to this Kool G Rap classic.

There’s a theme in rap of successful artists coming back and putting their friends on. Eminem did it with D12, Nelly did it with St. Lunatics, and Jay did it with Roc-A-Fella.

This is another way of diversifying your income stream. If each member of an entourage has their own identity, and their own way of making money, if one of them falls the others can pick them up. Jay’s basically laying out the blueprint for how he would run Roc-A-Fella, although it didn’t quite work out that way.

Essentially, Jay remained the key piece of the money-making puzzle. If he ever fell off, his friends would too, which was exemplified by the split of The Roc and Dame Dash and Kareem Burke’s subsequent financial failures.

Even Memphis Bleek, who achieved Gold success more than once on the label, is still reliant on Jay’s name, although he works incredibly hard himself.

“Bagged” is street slang for being arrested. If you’re not getting arrested, don’t be seen with police under any circumstances, otherwise someone might think you’re a snitch and want to kill you.

This rule reflects B.I.G.’s “Thug Code of Honor” mentality. The code of honor was made famous by Cam'ron’s discourse on snitching in his interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTwipn-Fp_U

The Source is one of the most popular hip hop magazines

Notice the parallel between Biggie’s use of Word-Up Magazine in the first verse (which is about his humble beginnings) in which he reads the magazine, to his use of The Source in the third verse (which is about his life at the top), in which he is on the cover of the magazine

“Unsigned Hype,” from The Source:
http://www.thesource.com/articles/66524/